Historians know that however useful a chronological or a thematic approach to history might be, these are simply explanatory frameworks – ways to construe, connect, and reconstruct the evidence of the past.

A good deal of work by historians goes on behind the scenes to make these frameworks yield coherent and compelling stories, and a great deal happens once we, as consumers and users of history, take hold of these stories for our own purposes.

Understanding how such processes work – and that they are at work as complexly in state and local history as in all other forms of history – is the first step toward a critical understanding of the past and our relation to it.

This essay focuses on five important issues that shape our historical understanding. Paying attention to evidence, perspective, narrative, memory and the passage of time enriches our understanding of the past. Each issue provides an entry point to engage the past critically, that is, to question our evidence and the story we weave from it.

In reality, history is not a static entity. History is a conversation across time and across space—a multi-voiced discussion from diverse evidence, a debate between evidence and the historians who use it, and a dialogue among historians who return repeatedly to old ideas with new questions and insights.

The historical conversation begins with writing. Traditionally, scholars divided history from pre-history at the point of the rise of civilizations some 5000 years ago when written texts first appeared.

Recognizable by large urban centers, most early civilizations developed writing as a way to control and manage efficiently large populations and the numerous tasks needed to keep a city stable, secure, and profitable.

The earliest written records include tax documents, censuses and legal codes, as well as poetry and epic tales. When we have documents, whether made 5000, 500 or 50 years ago, we have a window into the past.

Much of the historical record documents the big events such as the wars, elections and social conflicts that generate much public discussion and many public records. When people think of History, many think first of these grand moments in time. But history – and the historical record – is also found in the daily records of everyday life: the diaries of school children, the recipe books of the housewife, the note on a post card.

Understanding Maine history means understanding both the widely remembered events and the quietly forgotten occasions. And that understanding comes from evidence -- the foundation of our historical conversation.

Evidence

History begins with evidence – the documents and artifacts that have survived through time and from which historians build arguments about the past.

The building blocks of history are primary sources: documents that were created by individuals alive in the time period of study. Primary sources are first-hand accounts of events or ideas of the past and include manuscript (handwritten) materials such as letters, diaries and journals; political documents like treaties, legislation, and election results; official records from towns or the state; censuses and vital statistics; printed works including newspapers, magazines, and books; oral reminiscences; visual representations in maps, photographs, advertising and drawings, objects, and many, many more.

Primary sources capture a view in text, tales, or images of a particular moment in time. These sources comprise the historical record — the evidence –– with which historians build their interpretations of the past. Like a detective following clues or a quilt maker piecing together fabric squares, the historian attempts to create a whole by assembling diverse parts.

But historians can work only with the evidence that survives to present day. The urge to recycle has long been present: letters and books on cotton-based rag paper of the 18th century were frequently repulped, creating new sheets of paper, but obliterating the previous text.

People wrote on top of documents, tore off parts of pages to use for other purposes, and otherwise reused often-scarce paper. In the latter half of the 19th century, young women created scrapbooks – a popular hobby then as today – by pasting favorite poems, postcards and decorative items called scraps into previously used journals, store ledgers, or bound collections of letters, obliterating the earlier texts (but creating a different sort of primary document in their stead).

Some historical evidence self-destructs: wood-based paper of the 19th century is highly acidic and overtime becomes very fragile, often degrading into a pile of dust. Insects and rodents; floods, fires, and other disasters have destroyed records both public and private.

Families clean house and discard old newspapers and correspondence from long-dead ancestors. Boxes full of unlabeled photographs fill the shelves of antique shops across Maine.

Exhibits

The most immediate evidence about the Business and Professional Women's Club in Portland raises numerous questions about the organization and its purposes. A further search for evidence answers some questions and raises more.

John Fogg, a native of Eliot and graduate of Bowdoin College, left to Maine Historical Society his collection of more than 6,000 pages of documents containing important signatures. Among them was a broadside of the Declaration of Independence. Discovering its origins took many years.